Hannah Ford (center), 18, of Peaster, with fellow FFA members Candace Schiegg (left) and Shelby Brasher, was on hand for the opening session of the Texas FFA State Convention at the Dallas Convention Center on Tuesday.

A bumper crop of students in urban and suburban schools across the nation is giving your granddad’s rusty old Future Farmers of America club a 21st-century polish. The organization doesn’t even use the full name anymore, by the way, just the acronym.

Once an organization associated mainly with farming and stock shows, the FFA increasingly is emphasizing the intricate business of agriculture. Public schools are offering courses focusing on landscape and floral design, rather than just teaching agriculture students how to tend to animals and crops.

Consequently, while the number of American farms steadily declined from a peak of 6.8 million in 1935 to about a third of that today, the National FFA Organization is surging, with 557,318 members, including more than 95,000 in Texas.

Madeline Minchillo, a 19-year-old from Plano, represents the changing face of an organization founded in 1928 “to prepare future generations for the challenges of feeding a growing population.”

Minchillo once had her heart set on studying marine mammals.

So, as a freshman in the Plano Independent School District, she signed up for an intriguing course in aquaculture. But she learned right away that it wasn’t what she thought it would be.

“It was fish farming,” she said.

Still, the suburban daughter of two well-heeled, white-collar professionals stuck with the course.

Before long, Minchillo was not only hooked on Plano’s agricultural science program, she was lured into Plano West High School’s FFA — one of 7,498 chapters nationwide.

“I fell in love with it,” said Minchillo, now a sophomore at Texas A&M who was in downtown Dallas this week for the Texas FFA State Convention. “And it just changed my life.”

Minchillo’s experience, not to mention the steady rise in FFA membership and in the number of students taking agricultural courses, comes as no surprise to agriculture experts.

“I don’t really see it as a contradiction,” said John Anderson, an economist with the American Farm Bureau in Washington. “The FFA is not about just sending people back to the farms. It’s about leadership development and giving young people the life skills they need.

“It meshes with what the global economy needs moving forward.”

Nowhere is the FFA footprint more evident than in Texas, which has seen a dramatic rise in FFA members, from 62,708 in 2007 to 95,287 late last year.

“The reason you see an increase in the number of students going into FFA … is because it’s not just production agriculture anymore,” said Blake Bennett, an associate professor and economist with the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.

In Plano, he said, FFA members team up with veterinarians and other professionals who “go beyond teaching how to grow food and fiber. They go into how to get into agribusiness.”

Bennett was asked to evaluate the district’s program a few years ago. He saw firsthand why the FFA is flourishing.

“I told them I wish they had something like this when I was growing up,” he said.

To join the FFA, students must be enrolled in an agricultural course. Minchillo, despite her initial reluctance to dive into aquaculture, caught her teacher’s eye.

“She’s just a natural leader,” said Cristen Graf, one of nine agricultural teachers in the Plano school district.

Graf has taught agriculture courses at Plano West High for six years, and her husband, John, has taught at Plano East for five years.

She said Minchillo “was very interested in developing her life skills and leadership abilities. And that’s what the FFA is about.”

Minchillo’s parents initially were taken aback at their only child’s interest in joining the FFA.

“At first it was like, ‘What is that and why do you want to be a part of that? You weren’t interested in farming before,’” Minchillo said. “But I just immersed myself in it, and I’ve been in love with it ever since.”

Her parents said they didn’t know what to make of their daughter’s new passion.

“I’m from upstate New York,” said Joe Minchillo, an information technology consultant, “so I’d never ever heard of FFA.”

Nancy Minchillo, a Hewlett-Packard supplier diversity manager, said she was only vaguely familiar with the FFA, and she grew up in Missouri.

“I always thought it was just for boys,” she said. “It was kind of a throwback.”

Women weren’t allowed to join the organization until 1969. Since then, the FFA has seen a steady increase in female members, who now make up 44 percent of the national base and about half of state leadership positions.

After their daughter signed up, the Minchillos, who didn’t know any other parents with children in the FFA, took a keen interest.

“We started the booster’s club for Plano West FFA,” said Joe Minchillo. “We saw it as an investment of our time.”

Both are attending the Dallas convention, and they’ll be there Thursday when their daughter steps down as a state officer.

The couple said they were impressed with the students’ commitment to the FFA, which requires discipline and organizational skills.

“This is a student-run organization, and it’s impressive to see them at work,” Nancy Minchillo said.

“I don’t think you can wrap your arms around it until you see it in action,” said her husband.

Madeline Minchillo said her participation in the FFA has changed her outlook on life and her career ambitions.

She no longer just wants to work with marine mammals; she wants to handle shipping logistics for an agricultural business.

“Before, I was a regular city girl, never questioning where my food came from or the clothes on my back,” she said. “Now I realize how it all works: 1 or 2 percent of our population feeds the other 98 percent.

“That’s amazing. And it’s all rooted in agriculture.”

BY THE NUMBERS: FFA membership stats

The National FFA Organization has 557,318 members, ages 12-21, in 7,498 chapters in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Of those:

— 44 percent are female, and women hold about 50 percent of state leadership positions.

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